I've done some searches and haven't found a good explaination. I've had two hd's in my box forever. for more space and backup reasons. Well I have started running the Debian Squeeze distro since December. I've had many issues, some are still unresolved. but now I'm running into major headaches with the fstab. Specifically dealing with/wondering why UUID's are used instead of the old /dev/hd? I was a little annoyed when I tried Kubuntu to find /dev/sd? used instead of /dev/hd? but that was workable. But the UUID's are a nightmare. Here's my problem.

My main box is finally giving up the ghost. The mobo is dying. So in order to do some tests I took my hd bundle (my two hard drives with their cables) physically out of the box and temp installed them in a test box. I wanted to do some benchmark and other tests. I got all kinds of errors. I found that the system wasn't recognizing the UUID's listed in fstab. My concern is when the new mobo gets here next week I won't simply be able to plug the hd's in like I always have been and just let Linux reconfigure itself (Debian used to be good about this). I really don't want to have to clean reinstall if it's not needed.

So for this I have two questions. Can anyone give me a good reason WHY developers decided to drop using /dev/hd? or even /dev/sd? ?

And is it possible to revert fstab's listings back to the old /dev/hd? settings. In debian fstab had lines commented out showing how each partition was listed in it's /dev/hd? status during install.

I'm getting really sick of all these archane changes in ALL aspects of linux that don't seem to have any good explaination or need.

OK so I experimented. I first changed the UUID for one of my windows partitions (D back to /dev/hdb1 and rebooted. It still came up fine.

So then I changed the UUID for my home directory back to /dev/hda5 and rebooted. And here I am. Still fine. So I'm going to change the remaining partitions back too.

So my question is still...WHY? what was the reason for the change. It just seems to cause more problems that it is supposed to fix. I've read about people having trouble mounting because of this. (no X-rated joke intended) I just don't see the use.

I believe the UUID's were implemented so that the drives would be recognized properly no matter which controller or cable they were actually attached to.

You can edit fstab and change how the hard drives are referenced.

I too am getting sick of all the archane changes. Many of them appear to be change simply for the sake of change.
(Or maybe it's too many M$ Windows trained/educated people becoming involved with Linux.)
BUT some of the changes do have valid purposes in an enterprise situation; they're just not something the average home user requires.

--ET

THANK YOU!!!! FInally someone who is getting my whole point. Change for the sake of change is not improvement! I come from the old-school thought of "If it ain't broke don't fix it!"

All I need to do is mention KDE4. There are so many cluster-fsck's in that it's rediculous. I still can't play a cd in KSCD. And don't get me started on how Debian developers added a setting to Bind6v that now breaks all java network connections. If it weren't for the fact that I actually NEED some of the newer software in Debian Squeeze I'd have stayed with Lenny. All these changes are a pain.

but to your statement. I read that about recognizing the drives. However, from my experience it didn't work! We'll see when the new mobo comes in. I'm gonna leave my / dir and my /mnt/windows dir with the UUID's and see what happens then and post back.

KDE4; what a piece of crap.
KDE4 on Slackware 13.0 has made me for the first time in my life switch to GNOME.

--ET